Public broadcaster RTHK will air a new docudrama based on the story of bookseller Lam Wing-kee, who disappeared in 2015 and returned to Hong Kong the following year to reveal that he had been kidnapped and detained by mainland authorities.
Lam was the founder of Causeway Bay Books, which specialised in political gossipy titles banned in the mainland. Lam went missing from Shenzhen in October 2015, only to re-emerge on a Chinese television channel months later “confessing” to crimes of helping to run – with four other missing booksellers – a business to “illegally” send books to the mainland.
The latest edition of Below the Lion Rock, RTHK’s long-running drama series on Hong Kong, will broadcast an episode based on Lam’s story at 9pm on Sunday.
The episode will depict Lam’s two-day trip to Hong Kong in June 2016 after he was ordered by his kidnappers to take a hard drive containing a list of customers from the bookstore back to Shenzhen. Lam ultimately chose to stay in Hong Kong to expose the incident despite potential threats to his safety.
Lam will be played by storyteller and poet Yuen Che-hung.
Dunet Chan, the episode’s director, said he has been producing Below the Lion Rock drama episodes for the past two years, but described meeting more difficulties this time.
“I think it is related to the oppressive political atmosphere nowadays,” Chan wrote in a social media post. “When we were casting, many actors asked: ‘Wah, can you really shoot this?’ ‘Did RTHK approve this?’ ‘It seems very sensitive’.”
“I thought one actor fitted the role well, but he has family members in the mainland, so he could only tell us that he could not work on this after casting. More unfortunately, another actor accepted a role, and resigned a week before shooting. It was because she felt it was too risky after discussing with her family.”
Chan said he faced difficulties finding hotels for shooting locations as well.
“We asked many hotels – some would directly say they did not want to because the topic was too sensitive, or others would say they were fully booked,” he wrote.
“But when we searched for rooms at that hotel online, we found that there were lots of vacant rooms of different types. We told them that we found empty rooms on the hotel’s website, but they reminded us nervously that we should not book a room directly online,” Chan wrote.
But Chan said they were welcomed by bookstores.
“We asked a few small bookstores – almost all of them agreed to our shooting requests. Their cooperation, undoubtedly, comforted us during our difficult preparatory work,” he said.
“Every actor and every scene in this piece has met with different levels of pressure. That makes it even more precious that they are willing to present Hong Kong with their performance at this moment.”
